Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2016

Floor Speech

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Mr. KAINE. Madam President, I want to speak today about the Omnibus appropriations and tax bill. First, I want to applaud my colleagues who have worked tirelessly towards this deal for over a year now. Our leadership and the leaders of our Appropriations, Finance, and Budget Committees have been setting the stage for this action and I want to thank them.

This bill, H.R. 2029, the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2016, addresses many priorities that I have been fighting for since joining the Senate in 2013. It comes on the heels of the Bipartisan Budget Act we passed in October of this year, which addressed for 2 years the arbitrary budget caps set by sequestration and implements the first year of that agreement.

First enacted as part of the Bipartisan Budget Control Act of 2011, these arbitrary budget caps have been hurting our national defense and domestic priorities since sequestration went into effect in 2013 by arbitrarily forcing critical agencies such as the Department of Defense to set strategy and policy based on artificial caps. As a former mayor and Governor I have a lot of experience with budgets and decisionmaking. I understand using budgets gimmicks to set policy is the opposite of what we should be doing. It is a strategy that is unsustainable and must be addressed if we are to properly manage our finances.

In 2013, on the heels of the devastating government shutdown, Congress passed the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2013 to reduce uncertainty, adjust the budget caps to reflect current needs, and put the idea of another government shutdown behind us. That deal was a bipartisan compromise, heralded by Members from both sides of the aisle. We learned from that exercise that both parties can come together to give budget certainty to families and businesses.

This year, we faced the prospect of another harmful episode of sequestration whereby Congress's priority setting was once again to be determined by the budget law passed in 2011. Once again, lawmakers came together, and we passed the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2015, another 2- year bill which set appropriate spending targets and gave appropriators time to write full appropriations bills for the remainder of this fiscal year, thereby avoiding the risk of shutdowns or fiscal cliffs at the end of the year.

Because of all that activity, we find ourselves here today with this bill. Within this bill there is a lot of good: strong funding for Defense Department priorities like shipbuilding and the Ohio-class replacement; strong funding for educational programs like Head Start, Preschool Development Grants, and Teacher Quality Partnership Grants; strong funding for State Department embassy security training programs; strong funding for military construction projects around Virginia; strong commitments for the environment such as the American Battlefield Protection Act, Chesapeake Bay Program, and the Army Corps programs in Norfolk; strong funding for the National Park Service and for NASA's programs at Wallops Island; and strong funding for Plan Central America.

This bill also includes critically important programs on the revenue side. Three critical low- and middle-income tax programs--the child tax credit, earned income tax credit, and American opportunity tax credit-- have been made permanent in this bill, so has the research and development tax credit, along with an expansion in this credit for startups championed by Senator Coons that I have cosponsored. Also made permanent are tax programs for teachers, for conservation, and for military families. We have made other programs last for another 5 years. And others will be extended for 2 years, a step forward for these programs we have been extending for only 1 year at a time.

This package also contains energy policy that will advance our national goal of generating energy cleaner tomorrow than today, while ensuring that our short-term need for fossil fuels is met by American supplies and developed by American workers. The deal lifts the 40-year old ban on export of U.S. crude oil, which will create American jobs. The deal extends wind and solar tax incentives for 5 years.

The deal also hikes funding for the Land and Water Conservation Fund by 50 percent this year, which will support open space preservation efforts around the country and in Virginia at Rappahannock River Valley National Wildlife Refuge, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson National Forests, the Captain John Smith Chesapeake National Historical Trail, and elsewhere. Finally, it includes assistance for U.S. oil refineries, while stopping virtually all policy riders seeking to undermine critical air and water pollution laws.

This bill is by no means perfect. In particular, while I agree with many of the tax provisions included in this bill, a must-pass government funding bill is not the place to have the important tax policy debates facing this country. By passing this bill with so many tax provisions with little debate, we put off a broader agreement on comprehensive tax reform. I do agree with many aspects of this tax deal. But by taking this action now, we leave other critical tax policy decisions on the table with no debate on how we as a body should prioritize these issues.

And I am struck by the irony that all year long we debated how to provide sequester relief of about $100 billion for our national security and for education and health and research funding that will improve our economy. Those policies needed offsets. But this tax package will increase the deficit by nearly $700 billion, and there has not been discussion of offsetting this cost. That seems to me to be a bad precedent and an unfair distinction. In an era dominated by conversations about our national debt and deficits, we should do better to seek ways address these changes in a fiscally responsible way.

In the end, I choose to support this bill. The good in this legislation and the need for our Federal agencies to be able to plan and set the priorities of this country makes support the right decision. And the bipartisan character of the agreement will hopefully encourage more such cooperation.

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